{"id":3056,"date":"2011-10-05T12:41:55","date_gmt":"2011-10-05T01:41:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/?p=3056"},"modified":"2012-03-21T09:29:20","modified_gmt":"2012-03-20T22:29:20","slug":"australian-scientist-wins-nobel-prize-for-physics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/science\/australian-scientist-wins-nobel-prize-for-physics\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian scientist wins Nobel Prize for Physics"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/p>\n

The expansion of the Universe is accelerating, not decelerating as expected. Image: Shutterstock<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Universe may end in ice, according to Australian Nobel Laureate.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics<\/a> to three scientists for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae . One half was awarded to Professor Brian Schmidt<\/a> from the Australian National University and Professor Adam Reiss<\/a> from the Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute in the US, while other half was awarded to Professor Saul Perlmutter<\/a> from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California.<\/p>\n

The Supernova Cosmology Project, headed by Professor Perlmutter, was launched in 1988; while Professor Schmidt headed the High-z Supernova Search Team, which included Professor Reiss and was launched in 1994. The two research teams aimed to map the Universe by locating the most distant supernovae.<\/p>\n

The Universe is known to be expanding as the result of the Big Bang, which occurred approximately 14 billion years ago. In 1998, the research team announced that their findings indicated that the rate of expansion is accelerating, rather than decreasing under the pull of gravity.<\/p>\n

Both teams used a particular type of supernova, la supernova, which are explosions of old, compact stars which are the size of Earth and as heavy as the Sun. The teams discovered over 50 supernovae whose light was weaker than expected, indicating that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating.<\/p>\n

The Nobel Prize committee described the discovery of the acceleration as astounding. “If the expansion will continue to speed up the universe will end in ice.”<\/p>\n

The discovery came as a surprise to the Laureates themselves. Certainly the first surprise was when Adam and I were talking about the first results that he was coming out with, and we could see the results and the data,” Professor Schmidt told Adam Smith, Editorial Director of Nobel Media, in a telephone interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I have to admit at that point I just figured that a mistake had been made. But that mistake never really went away. And so, after about 6 weeks, I think the surprise of what was in the data had worn off, but then I think we had to face the realities that we were going to have to tell the world about it.”\u009d<\/p>\n

The acceleration is believed to be driven by dark matter, which comprises about three quarters of the Universe. “The findings have helped to unveil a Universe that to a large extent is unknown to science,” the Nobel Prize committee said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Universe may end in ice, according to Australian Nobel Laureate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,39,8,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astrophysics","category-physics","category-science","category-space"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3056"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3056"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4256,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3056\/revisions\/4256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}